Blood Magic

  See, no. That was why I didn’t want to be in Yaleylah. Everything reminded me of Mom, and of all the things I wasn’t supposed to think about. In the house, I stopped in front of every door wondering which had been her bedroom. In the kitchen, I wondered if she’d taught herself to make that awesome spaghetti sauce or if her own mom had helped. Had she stared off at the cemetery like I caught myself doing before bed last night? Or had she been totally uninterested in ghosts? These were things I’d never know because she was off in Arizona pretending I didn’t exist.

  I burst out of the woods really abruptly. I hadn’t even noticed the light getting a little better. A road—really just two wheel tracks overgrown with weeds—was between me and the dilapidated cemetery wall. I hiked across to the crumbling stones and climbed over easily. A thin little moon grinned at me beside a scattering of stars. The sky was purplish and clear. And the cemetery spread for at least a quarter mile before ending at a huge hedge keeping it private from our nearest neighbors’ house.

  It seemed rude to keep kicking through the leaves now that I was in a cemetery, so I slowed down and walked quietly. Most of the headstones were blackened granite or marble, the epitaphs worn down and obscured by darkness. I could read some names and a few dates going back to eighteen-something-something. Touching them was irresistible, so I wandered with my hands out, patting one here and just dragging my fingers against another. The stone was cold and rough, also grimy. A few of the headstones had dying flowers clinging to them. There was no noticeable pattern to the layout of the graves; as soon as I thought I’d found a row, it bent out into a weird oval or courtyard. It wasn’t as though I was likely to get lost when I could easily see the black mass of the woods around my house on one end and the neighbors’ on the other. I wondered who lived there, and if the fields to the south belonged to them, too, or another farmer.

  It was all quiet except for the low hum of bugs from the woods, with the occasional burst from crows yelling at each other. I watched a flock of them fly away, teasing and pecking at each other loudly, and I found myself relaxing. At least I could find some peace with the dead bodies. They were probably all decomposed to dust by now. Except maybe Grandpa. I kept my eyes peeled for a bright, new headstone.

  I wondered if I would have liked him, if I’d ever come to visit. I could have. Should have, I guess. But I’d never known him, and Dad never brought up anything having to do with Mom’s family, so mostly I just lived my life without thinking about it. There was no point in stressing about it now.

  A statue about ten feet ahead of me moved. I froze, then ducked behind a five-foot-tall obelisk like the Washington Monument. Peering around the corner, I realized the statue was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and had barrettes in her hair that glittered purple in the moonlight. I was an idiot.

  The girl sat on the ground with her back against a fresh headstone. A book rested open beside her, and a blue plastic grocery bag flapped against her knee. She was skinny, with choppy short hair that stuck up in this dramatic way I really liked. Like I could run my hands through it and she wouldn’t snap at me for messing it up (like some girls I could mention) because it wouldn’t make a difference. I opened my mouth to say hi, but stopped when she lifted a pocketknife and put it against her thumb.

  What the hell?

  After a hesitation, when her lips pushed together, she cut herself. No.

  The blood dripped down her skin and I thought of my mom with Band-Aids on all her fingers.

  I remembered Mom pricking her finger and smearing blood across a mirror to show me the images that came alive in it, or dripping it onto a small plastic dinosaur toy and whispering a word to make the stegosaurus wag its spiky tail. I didn’t want to remember it, didn’t want to know that it hadn’t been only our shared brand of crazy.

  The girl leaned over and whispered to the leaf in front of her. It shuddered, and then unfurled, turning bright green.

  HO-lee shit.

  She glanced up at me. My mouth was hanging open. There was no effing way I’d seen that. It wasn’t possible. Not here. Not again.

  As I snapped my mouth shut, she scrambled to her feet, pocketknife thrust behind her back.

  I stepped around the headstone, dragging my gaze away from the leaf and up to her face. “Sorry,” I managed to gasp out. “I was just wandering past, and I saw …” I glanced back at the leaf.

  “Saw what?” she whispered, like there was something in her throat.

  “Nothing … nothing. Just you.”

  Her face remained guarded. “I don’t know you.”

  “I’m Nicholas Pardee.” I didn’t usually introduce myself that way, but it was as if in the cemetery I had to tell her my full name. As if it mattered. “I just moved into the old house next to the cemetery.” I managed not to wince. Talk about cliché. Hi, I moved into old man Harleigh’s spooky house and like to wander graveyards. I usually have a big dog named Scooby with me.

  “Oh, yes.” She looked off in the direction of my house. “I heard. I’m Silla Kennicot. We live back that way.” She waved behind her at the nearby house, then seemed to suddenly remember the knife was in her hand and whipped it behind her back again.

  I took a long breath. Okay, so she was my neighbor. And my age. And hot. And possibly messed in the head. Or I was. Because there was no way this was happening. Me, hot girl, and what had looked like … no. No. I felt prickly, like I’d sprouted porcupine quills all down my back. I wanted to say something obnoxious to make myself feel better, to get my feet back under me, but instead I said something totally lame. “Silla—I’ve never heard that name. It’s pretty.”

  She looked away, her face going still as glass. When she spoke, her voice was thin enough to shatter into a thousand pieces. “It’s short for Drusilla. My dad taught Latin at the high school.”

  “Oh, Latin, huh.” Taught. Past tense.

  “It means something like strong.” She said it like it was ironic.

  We stared at each other. I was torn between grabbing her and yelling that I knew exactly what she’d been doing and that she had to stop before somebody got hurt … and pretending we were both normal and didn’t care about blood. Maybe she was just a dumb cutter, or it was an accident. I didn’t know enough about her. Maybe it didn’t have anything to do with my mom. Maybe I hadn’t really seen anything. I refused to let myself glance back down at the leaf.

  “Have you graduated?” she asked.

  Startled, I answered a bit too loudly. “Oh, no. I’m starting school tomorrow.” I offered my best wry smile. “Can’t wait.”

  “You must be a senior?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We might not have any classes together, then. I’m a junior.”

  “I suck at history,” I offered.

  “I’m in AP.” She smiled again, and real humor made her eyes narrow. They didn’t seem so ghostly and huge.

  I laughed. “Damn.”

  Silla nodded, and looked down. While we’d been talking, she’d drawn her foot through the spiral etched into the dirt. It was just a mess of lines now, and bits of dry grass and leaves. No sign of anything weird. Relief made me bolder. “Is your hand okay?”

  “Oh, um.” She brought her hands out, slipping the folded knife into her jeans pocket. A ring hugged each of her fingers. Splaying them wide, she studied her thumb. Blood was smeared across it.

  “Peroxide,” I said abruptly. That’s what Mom had used. I hated the smell.

  “What?”

  “You should use that to, uh, clean it.”

  “It isn’t so bad. Just a little prick,” she murmured.

  Silence surrounded us, except for the distant calling of those crows.

  Silla opened her mouth, paused, then sighed softly. “I should go home and take care of it.”

  I wished I had something else to say. But I was trapped between wanting to forget what I might have seen and wanting to demand explanations. All I did know was that I didn’t want her to leave. “Can I walk you?”
>
  “No, that’s okay. It’s just a little ways.”

  “Sure.” I bent and picked up the little book for her. It was plain and ancient-looking, with no title. “Old family heirloom?” I joked.

  Silla froze, lips parted for an instant like she was afraid, but then laughed. “Yeah, exactly.” She shrugged like we were sharing a grand joke and took the book. “Thanks. See you, Nicholas.”

  I held up a hand, waving. She darted off, making almost no noise. But I continued to hear my name, long and kind of exotic-sounding in her quiet voice, after she’d disappeared into the shadows.

  SILLA

  As the screen door smacked closed behind me, I heard the answering machine pick up Gram Judy’s call. “Hey, kiddos, bunko’s dragging, probably thanks to the vodka I dropped into Margie’s punch. I’ll miss supper, but if you need me to pick anything up, give a call. Ciao.”

  Good. I was shaking with excitement, and I wanted to talk to Reese before she got home. Making my way down the hall to the kitchen, I thought about Nicholas Pardee, who’d nearly seen the magic. It hadn’t occurred to me that I needed to be so careful in the cemetery—nobody went there but me. Nicholas’s grandpa, Mr. Harleigh, had been buried across town in the newer cemetery with everyone else. It was only by a special request in Dad’s will that he and Mom were so close to home.

  But Nicholas had been gentle about my hand, and watched me with the oddest, most intriguing expression. Like he knew my secret. Even though he couldn’t. Because if he’d seen the leaf, he would surely have decided he’d imagined it. Nobody believed in magic.

  Nodding to myself, as if I accepted my own reasoning, I flipped on the kitchen light and placed the spell book on the table. At the sink, I turned on the water and rinsed my thumb. The ruffled curtains over the sink fluttered in the breeze pushing through the open window, and I imagined singing my favorite show tune of the week while Mom hummed along next to me, peeling potatoes in her favorite apron, with the cartoon rabbits all over it. That apron was folded in the bottom of a drawer next to the oven now.

  I patted my hand dry and looked at the wound. It was small and smooth from the sharp knife, and it stung. Part of me still couldn’t believe the magic had worked, and that I’d actually cut myself for it. That I’d had the guts to do it. Turning to lean against the counter, I stared at the spell book. My stomach pinched and I felt my lungs contract. Magic was real. I’d changed that leaf with just some lines in the dirt, my blood, and a few little words.

  Magic was real, and my dad wasn’t crazy.

  The relief was heavy enough that I needed to sit down at the table. All I could hear was the soft ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall and my own breath. I pressed my elbows into the wood and folded my hands together. My feet tapped on the hardwood floor, frantically, like they were trying to run far, far away. But I couldn’t stop them. I wanted to run, to scream, to fly up into the sky and laugh as I looked down at the changed world.

  Two hours ago I’d been lost, just a girl with two dead parents and an angry, distant brother. Now I knew my dad lived on through the spell book. Through the magic.

  A smile quirked across my face. I imagined a mask settled against my skin: brilliant yellow and blue, with gold glitter sprinkled everywhere and cheerful pink flowers at the corners of the wide smile.

  It was eight p.m. Reese would be home anytime. I couldn’t focus on homework while I waited, but I wasn’t hungry and the house was perfectly clean. I’d spent a lot of time the past few months cleaning and cooking to keep myself busy and distracted, but there was only so much bleach a toilet could take. I hopped to my feet anyway. The brown paper the spell book had arrived in rested on the floor near the entryway. I wrinkled it up and dumped it in the recycling bin under the sink. I unloaded the dishwasher and rearranged the daisies in the vase in the dining room. I swept the hardwood hallway floor and around all the rugs in the den and Gram Judy’s bedroom. Even after going over the kitchen, I didn’t have enough detritus to fill the dustpan. I dusted everywhere except Dad’s office, but it didn’t take more than a single Swiffer sheet, since I’d dusted only two days ago. Then I grabbed one of Reese’s paperbacks, a historical murder mystery. It started with blood, and I couldn’t read it. So I tried one of Gram Judy’s left-wing magazines, and the words swam around on the page, making me think of runes and magical ingredients.

  A car door slammed outside. My heart thudded hard and I closed my eyes, sucking in a long, calming breath. Reese’s familiar footsteps clomped up the porch, and the front screen door creaked open.

  I held the spell book to my chest as I went to meet him.

  Reese propped himself half in, half out of the house, with the screen against his butt, as he scraped mud off his boots.

  He was two years older than me, and should have been up at Kansas State getting his bachelor’s. But he’d deferred his admission after Mom and Dad had died, and I couldn’t bring myself to argue.

  When he turned to step inside, Reese startled, flinging a hand out. It smacked into the door frame. “Christ, Sil, what the hell are you doing?”

  I held out the spell book in both hands, like an offering.

  “What’s this?” He tromped in, snatching the book carelessly. I swallowed a whimper of distress and bit my lip.

  Reese pushed around me into the kitchen. He tossed his wallet onto the table, and the book beside it. Going to the cabinet, he pulled out a glass to fill with water. “Where’d it come from?”

  Appalled by his lack of concern, I said, “It’s Dad’s.”

  He stopped, glass halfway to his lips. Then he carefully set the glass on the counter and turned. His jaw was locked.

  “Here.” I opened the book and pulled out the Deacon’s note, keeping my eyes away from Dad’s handwriting. I fluttered it at Reese.

  Slowly, as if pushing his hand through water, he took it. I stared at his face while he unfolded it and read. He needed to shave, but he usually did. His skin was darker than it had ever been, from all the time he spent working in the sun with the harvest crew these days. It had gilded his hair and sunk into all his pores. Made him look older. Or maybe Mom and Dad had more to do with that.

  His mouth fell into a hard frown, and two blotches of muddy color flushed his cheeks. Suddenly, he crumpled the note into his fist.

  I leapt forward. “Reese!”

  “It’s crap,” he said.

  “No it isn’t!”

  “You want this to be real?” He stepped forward, brandishing his fist.

  “It is real.” I took his fist in my hands and pried up his fingers until I could get to the note. My fingers were shaking again.

  “It’s crazy. If this was Dad’s, it proves what everyone says. He was crazy and he did it on purpose.”

  My tongue dried up and shriveled into the back of my throat. I couldn’t say anything, as usual, against Reese’s horrible certainty.

  “Yeah, Sil. On purpose. Planning to shoot her.” His voice wavered. His fingers curled as if he might punch the wall again.

  “No.” I scuttled back to the table and grabbed the spell book. “I tried it. The magic works. I—”

  “Bull.”

  The sharp tone cracked through my joyful mask, and it slid off my face.

  Reese crossed his arms over his chest. “Don’t bullshit me, Silla. I’m tired and not in the mood.”

  “I’m not.” My voice was reasonable, smooth. “It worked. I transformed a dead leaf, Reese, and if the magic is real, then Dad wasn’t crazy. He didn’t do what they say he did.”

  “Say it, Silla. Killed Mom. That’s what they say because that’s what happened.”

  I shook my head and set the book deliberately on the table. “Look at it. Really look at it. Then I’ll show you.” I had to get outside.

  Threading through the hallway, I went out the back of the house and ran down the patio stairs onto the grass. Crickets and cicadas screamed through the darkness. I closed my eyes and saw Mom and Dad, limbs twined together in
a great splatter of blood. The rivulets reached for my shoes, but I couldn’t move, could only stare and stare and suck in air sticky with blood and death. Would it have helped to tear at my eyes until the memory of them sprawled in the study was scratched away forever?

  “Silla.” Reese came out of the house. He had the book.

  “Why don’t you believe in him?” I begged.

  “I saw”—Reese grabbed for me, caught my arm—“I saw them, just like you did. Why don’t you see it now?”

  I jerked away. “I do.”

  “You see what you want to see, Silla. Have you ever heard of this Deacon person? No. We don’t know anything about him, or if he’s real or what. At best this is a sick joke, and at worst it’s something Dad really believed in and that doesn’t prove he’s innocent, it proves he was psycho.”

  The magic is real, Reese. The world is different tonight. I let out a long, slow sigh. He couldn’t know without seeing. Couldn’t have faith. “He was our dad. I know he didn’t do it.”

  Throwing the book to the grass, Reese said, “He did—the police proved it, for chrissake. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind. It doesn’t matter if some crazy spells work. He pulled that damned trigger. Sheriff Todd was Dad’s friend. Don’t you think he’d do everything he could to …” He trailed off, shaking his head with frustration. We’d had this conversation before.

  “He didn’t do it. The magic—”